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Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] [RFC] Scalar Type Hints v0.2
From: rowan.collins@gmail.com (Rowan Collins)

Zeev Suraski wrote on 15/01/2015 11:56:
> PLUS have the ability to radically
> change how it behaves based on a runtime option.  It's so bad that we
> decided more than a decade ago that we want to refrain from ever introducing
> such elements to PHP again (e.g. magic_quotes_runtime), and I'm not sure why
> we're even discussing it.

Just on this point, I do think declare() is potentially less evil than 
ini_set() / php.ini. A declare() directive is scoped to a particular 
section of code, so library authors shouldn't need to care which setting 
their users prefer, only the version they themselves wish to use. This 
contrasts completely with things like mbstring.func_overload, which 
makes shared library code run differently in different configurations.

As has been clarified elsewhere on this thread, under this proposal a 
library author writing function foo(int $foo) will ALWAYS receive an 
integer, regardless of how that integer is arrived at. Very 
approximately, the declare() directive effectively gives the caller a 
choice between two pieces of syntactic sugar, both of which guarantee 
that the callee's contract will be met:

if ( is_int($foo) ) { foo($foo); } else { raise_type_error($foo); }

or

foo ( (int)$foo );

So, just to repeat, this is NOT like register_globals or 
mbstring.func_overload, because shared code never needs to handle both 
settings.

That's not to say I'm 100% convinced that this is the right way to go, 
just that it's not as abominable as some people are making out.

Regards,
-- 
Rowan Collins
[IMSoP]